Daiichi Sankyo begins sharing clinical trial data online

Joins the likes of GSK, Lilly, UCB and Astellas in opening up its records

Daiichi Sankyo has joined many of its industry peers in their transparency efforts by signing up to a portal that provides anonymised patient-level data on request to qualified researchers.

The Japanese pharma company said requests can now be submitted via the Clinical Study Data Request website for data from its trials for medicines that are approved in the EU and US.

Mahmoud Ghazzi, global head of development for Daiichi Sankyo, said: "Sharing clinical data from trials sponsored by Daiichi Sankyo with qualified researchers helps foster additional scientific insights and provides a mechanism for further understanding of our medicines, which ultimately is a benefit to patient healthcare.”

The company said it will provide data for medicines and indications approved on or after 1 January 2014, but that access to the information would be mediated by an independent review panel.

Once the panel approves the request, Daiichi will anonymise the information to protect patient privacy, and will make requested analyses available in “a secure electronic environment”.

The Clinical Study Data Request website was spearheaded in 2013 by GlaxoSmithKline, which lists on the site 1,700 clinical trials dating back to the company's formation in 2000.

Since May 2013 the AllTrials transparency campaign says data have been made available via the Clinical Study Data Request website to over 80 research teams.

Furthering the site's credentials, a new independent review panel was appointed last week by the Wellcome Trust. The new five-member panel will be chaired by Professor Jeffrey Koplan, president for global health at Emory University and means both the panel and review process are completely independent from the trial sponsors offering to make data available.